


hard to break

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 15:04:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1748873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>asexual Zevran realising his asexuality but already in a relationship with the Warden</p>
            </blockquote>





	hard to break

Neria rolls onto her back, panting a little. She knows it’s cold outside but there’s drops of water caught on the inside of the canvas, and she shifts her arm to find a cool place off the thick blankets. 

"That was," she pauses to take a breath. "Fantastic." Beside her, Zevran answers with only his own fast exhale. "Don't you think?" She rolls her head against the pillow to look at him. "Not sure I mind fighting monsters if I get to come back home to that."  _Home,_  of course, is this tent pitched wherever they wander, but the tent comes with Zevran these days, and that makes it home enough. 

Zevran look pained for a moment, but before Neria can ask what the matter is his characteristic smirk is on his face and he's turning and touching her, hand sliding over the drying sweat on her stomach and he's asking if maybe they can go again.

She's a Grey Warden. Of course she can.

.

_Deep down you regret the life you have lived._

He doesn't know why he keeps at it.

_May I rest my head in your bosom?_

He knows he doesn't want to, but it's easier, here, lying half out of the tent, naked torso basking in the sun. Neria once told him he's like a cat, to which he laughed and meow-ed, nuzzling up against her neck. 

_There have been many bosoms in my past, though only few as fine as-_

He bites away the memory, feeling ashamed. He does not want this. He does _not_. But he has no idea how to be anything other than this person with knives in his hands and a smirk on his face, and he does not know how to talk to a person outside of flirting. 

He feels sick within. 

The camp is quiet. Neria has gone without him, but she will return, soon.

She will kiss him. Take him to bed. 

He enjoys it. Truly, he does, but if she did not seek that kind of attention out... He closes his eyes against the bright sun and lets out a sigh. If Neria did not seek out that kind of attention, Zevran knows he would bring it to her. He has no idea how to be any other sort of person. 

.

The fire is hot and bright and Alistair did not cook tonight. It is a blessing, though Wynne's food is not much better at least she has some sense about the process. Zevran would have cooked. However. Neria returned with blood on her shirt and a wound to her side. It was not deep, but she told him it required attention in the privacy of their tent. 

He can feel Alistair trying not to look at him in that particular way that he has. Zevran feels like a whore. He stands up abruptly and walks into the trees. No one follows him, and by the time they realise he has not gone simply to relieve himself he has lost himself amongst the forest and they cannot seek him out.

.

Neria wakes the moment the tent flap opens, but there was no cry given and her dog guards the way, so she does not reach for her staff. 

"Zevran?" she asks, unable to tell in the darkness. 

"It is me."

"Where were you? I was worried." She reaches up and finds his shirt, and pulls him into a kiss that he returns through habit, and then stops when he realises what he is doing. "What is it?" she asks. 

"Nothing," he says, and lies down beside her. 

.

"Would you mind-?" he begins, a week later, and is unable to complete the sentence so he smirks and makes a lewd comment, and she laughs in return and Wynne shakes her head at them both. 

It might be easier if Wynne suspected, of course, but Wynne is only concerned for his morality and his soul. 

.

Lazing by the fire before bed, Neira runs a hand down the smooth skin of his leg. They are both elves; at least there is no wonder in his particular features. Still, she innocently trails her fingertips higher.

He does not know how this has happened.

He grew up fighting and fucking and he has no problem with murder. He still takes the same joy in winning a good fight as he always did, he still enjoys sharpening his knives and wiping thick red blood from the blades.

But he does not enjoy this physical proximity. Neria has broken so many of his habits. He hates that perhaps she has broken this one, too. 

.

He tells her. It takes nearly the whole of the Blight but he tells her. 

They are in a room in Denerim, and Neria has spent the whole day out running errands while he has kept indoors. Better to have only one elf on the task, she said, and seeing the city he had agreed. 

She has come indoors and washed and dried herself, and, naked, she crawls into bed. He blows out the candle before he follows her, and at the last moment decides to keep his undergarments on.

"What's this?" she teases, finding the fabric and tugging on it. "It's too late to start playing hard to get." She moves as if to slide a hand beneath it but he pulled away. 

"What if you don't die?"

She stills, and so does he, stunned that those words left his tongue.

"Then we all go home happy. Or," she laughs, "I find a home that wasn't overrun with demons, I guess."

"What if... What if you're paralysed. Or I am. And we can't do," he does not like the hesitant way that the words are leaving his lips. "This."

"Sex?" she asks, horribly blunt.

"Yes."

"I think paralysed people can still have sex. Anyway," she lets a warm glow from her hand flood over his hip, and he has to force himself to not shy away from the touch. "I'm a mage."

"What if," he cannot make the words happen. He can't. He hooks a thumb beneath the hem of his underwear and slides them off.

This is easier.

.

In the face of everything else it's not especially important. Neria is important, and he knows she needs him. Relies on him. He is a stable force in her world, a point of emotional certainty.

They all are, but Wynne's dying and Morrigan changes from day to day, and Alistair is such a heavy friendship to carry. 

Zevran is her constant, and he decides that he will be that for her. 

.

He does tell her. 

They're in Denerim, still in that same room, and again she washes and dries herself, picks at the bread left on the sideboard from supper, and crawls into bed. 

Zevran does not take off his clothes and he does not blow out the lamp.

She has that look in her eye and this habit is one he cannot keep. It is breaking him. He has been tortured before, but not like this and not by himself. 

"What is the matter?" she asks. It is clear she is not in the mood for talking. He needs to say the words and he needs to say them fast. 

"I will not have sex with you."

The silence aches. 

It stretches and snaps. 

"You're ending this? Now?" She lurches out of bed, scars over her dark skin bright in the flickering firelight.

"No -" Braska. "I did not mean -" He swallows, and looks down at his hands. "I find I have no interest in sex." _  
_

"That's as fine a cop out as ever I heard," she huffs, folding her arms over her chest. "If you don't want me just say so."

"Neria, I would follow none other - stand at no other's side. If you ask it of me I will do it, but  _I_  am asking  _you_."

She studies him carefully, and he itches to hold a knife just so he can imagine he is protected against whatever damage she might cause. 

"You truly mean this?"

He nods. "I do."

She takes a step, and he is afraid, tensing up, as if he could ever beat her in any kind of battle. She picks up her shirt.

His stomach drops. Of course he expected this; he would have been a fool to not expect this. He has watched her pull it on before he manages to find his tongue. 

"I can leave," he says. "This is your room."

He does not know where he finds the strength to move his legs but he does, and he turns, takes his knives from where they are sitting on a chair and pauses at the door. He wants to apologise. To take it back, to make things how they used to be, but he has never been this honest in his life.

"Where are you going?"

He looks at his fingers holding the doorknob and frowns. "I am leaving you be. I would not force my company on someone who wants what I cannot give."

"I want you here," she snaps, and he flinches at the force of it. Then, more softly, apologetically, Neria adds, "if you would stay."

"Even though -" he cannot say those words again. Once was enough, and he had to repeat himself. 

"Even though," says Neria. Zevran turns to look at her. She has on a shirt and underwear, and with her hair all a mess and a sad, hopeful little smile on her face she has never looked more appealing. "Will you stay?" she asks. 

Zevran puts the knives back down. Of course he will. 


End file.
